“There are certain records that point in a
direction that no one has taken further,”
Field Music’s David Brewis believes.
“Records like The Beatles’ White Album
or Tusk by Fleetwood Mac or Peter
Gabriel’s third [eponymous] album.
Each song on those albums pointed to a
new genre of what music could be. We
wondered what it would be like to combine
all those records but within the
parameters of new music.”

Field Music—David Brewis (left)
and Peter Brewis.

Including brother Peter Brewis,
Field Music recorded their second
album, Measure [Memphis Industries],
in Sunderland, England, at the group’s
8 Music studio, a rented space in the
quaint-sounding Wearmouth Community
Development Trust.

Utilizing that small but hardy gear
set, the Brewises combine classic
British melodies with a modern recording
approach and found-sound oddities.
“The Beatles productions were always a
balance of live performance and studio
construction,” David states. “We’re really
inspired by that; not using technology to
make everything perfectly in time or perfectly
in tune. We might combine live
organ and reverb with street noises from
Newcastle city center and the toilet
spinning below our studio—things that
can’t coexist as live music.”

Measure’s “Let’s Write a Book,”
“Choosing Numbers,” and the title
track perfectly represent Field Music’s
past/present style, reflected in
supremely layered vocal harmonies,
acoustic guitar pageantry and foundsound
textures produced by birds,
cars, trains, and the occasional spinning
coin. And while the Brewises rely
primarily on live instrumental performance,
they’re not beyond manipulation,
as heard in “Measure.”

“Measure has four different drum
parts, two kits in each speaker,” David
explains. “We created a floor-tom loop
to a click on each channel. Then Peter
played the kick and snare live in each
channel to the floor-tom loop. It
required a lot of editing in Logic
because we didn’t figure it all out until
the last 20 minutes of the session.
Peter became so frustrated editing the
left-channel loop that he gave up. So
we put it all on hard disk and edited
the right channel only. We also deliberately
didn’t listen to the track while he
was playing the kick and snare just to
let those rhythms make their own
structure within the song. Because
the song is in eight-bar segments, we
didn’t need crash cymbals to emphasize
section changes; it’s just tom fills.”

Similarly, the ear-twisting effects of
“Choosing Numbers” involved more
sonic sleight of hand. “There’s a pen
rolling across a table, looped in Logic,”
David says. “We rolled the pen across a
table, tightened it up in Logic, and
looped it. There’s also a coin spinning in
that track. Different kinds of percussive
sounds looped in particular ways can
give you a more interesting momentum
than what a drum kit can do.”

Field Music’s simpatico sibling harmonies
are one of the glories of Measure,
often double-, triple-, and
quadruple-tracked for a choir (or rousing
pub) effect.

“We like using the [Tru-Tape Delay]
tape echo simulator plug-in in Logic
Express for vocals,” David says. “We
have four busses set up: one for
longish reverb, one for a shortish
reverb, a tape echo with slapback, and
a tape echo where the delay time is
unnaturally quick to give vocals an
automatic double-tracking effect.
Eventually we replace the plug-in
reverb with chamber echo, often from
the women’s bathroom underneath our
studio. The men’s room has an automated
flush, which we obviously don’t
want to record. We can’t turn it off.”

What the Brewises can turn off is
the click, which is largely anathema to
their “natural sounds” slant. For Field
Music, it more than measures up.

“The things I associate with a studio
product are mostly things I don’t like, like
fake energy or fake excitement,” he says
bluntly. “I want that flow in the tempo,
which you can’t really get playing to a click.
We like natural sounds, but at the same
time we will deliberately do something,
which is impossible to play live. We
want to expose the cracks in the
recording process. Is it contrived? It
has to be. That’s what recorded music
is, and that’s why it’s so exciting.”